The morning of July 19, 2006, after reading in silence from St. Basil and St. Augustine, the Psalms, and Micah, I laid my body onto the floor. Amidst many changes going on in the external life, I rested in contemplation. I witnessed fatigue with words. What a blessed fatigue! What a gift when even religious words make the soul nauseous with their banality and triteness. I enjoyed the grace of it. This oft resting has become to me a witness to what Buddhists call One Taste. This is freedom, freedom I have learned to relish as release from need to make religion and spirituality another thing to do, to make happen, to prove myself by. In this, I know what St. Paul says, in Ephesians 1.6 of the Christian Scripture - I know, and can relax into the Truth that I am already accepted in the Beloved, the Word. I am thankful that Buddhism helped me learn what the early Fathers of the Church taught, also, about this fecund and clear Silence.

In the Spirit, experiencing the kenosis, or self-emptying, of Christ, in Prayer, it is not foremost that I choose to be empty. I rest and witness the Emptiness I always am. In this, we continue the kenosis of the eternal Word emptying in "descent" to birth as Jesus. We "descend" in humility to "ascend" in Love - there is no other way for the transformation of "ascension" to occur, regardless of how such self-emptying may run counter to the values of our larger society. For this self-emptying, which is by Grace and to Grace, runs counter to the contorted desire to self-affirm the self, rather than relax into the intrinsic worth of self in Grace.

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